When an ism isn't an ism

Some rather old words from John Dewey could be applied to current arguments for current educational movements such as constructivism:

"Those who are looking ahead to a new movement in education, adapted to the existing need for a new social order, should think in terms of Education itself rather than in terms of some 'ism about education, even such an 'ism as "progressivism." For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an 'ism becomes so involved in reaction against other 'isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them."

John Dewey (1938) "Experience and Education" New York: Kappa Delta Pi

The Skill/Wisdom Gap

Deep wisdom about the meaning of the 21st century will be essential. A serious problem of our time is the gap between skill and wisdom. Science and technology are accelerating furiously, but wisdom is not. We are brilliant at creating new technology, but are not wise in learning how to cope with it. To succeed in today's world, people will need intricate skills in narrowly specialized areas. Skills need detailed, narrowly focused study of subjects that are rapidly increasing in complexity, whereas wisdom needs the synthesis of diverse ideas. Wisdom requires judgement, reflection about beliefs and thinking about events in terms of how they might be different.

Today, deep reflection about our future circumstances is eclipsed by a frenzy of ever more complex techniques and gadgets and preoccupation with how to increase shareholder value. The skill/wisdom gap is made greater because skills offer the ways to get wealthy. Society's best brains are saturated with immediate issues that become ever more complex, rather than reflecting on why we are doing this and what the long-term consequences will be.

University education today is much more pressured than when I was at university. The curricula have become overstuffed, the subject matter intensely complex and the examinations frequent and demanding. The student sticks to the curriculum and can deal with little else. The professors stick to their discipline; they are judged by the papers they publish in the professional journal of that discipline. Most areas of education have almost no interdisciplinary scholarship. As disciplines become deeper and more complex, the brilliance expended on them is formidable, but we don't think much about its consequences or what impact it has in other areas. In specialized areas, computers will become vastly more intelligent than people, but such intelligence is not human wisdom. As computers become more intelligent, with intense self-improvement of non-human intelligence, the skill/wisdom gap will widen at a furious rate.

We have vast numbers of experts on how to make the train work better and faster, but almost nobody is concerned with where the train is headed or whether we'll like its destination.

Wisdom is essential and comes from the synthesis of a large amount of knowledge and experience that may take much of a lifetime to acquire. Not everyone can handle such synthesis. We must ask where the broad wisdom about the future will come from. The answer is, we must set out consciously to develop it. Wisdom, like advanced civilization, will come when we learn to relax. Our best brains need to stop chasing the most highly paid careers, the fastest boats and the smartest country clubs. A mature society should exhibit deep respect for deep wisdom.

We need to set out very consciously to foster and nurture the wisdom that the 21st century will require. This should be a task for our greatest universities.

Martin, James (2006) The Meaning of the 21st Century: A Vital Blueprint for ensuring our Future. London: Transworld. (pp. 292, 293).

Header sketch by Jonathan Chambers.

SLA: Formulating an Effective Dual Language Policy

In decisions about language separation and allocation in a bilingual classroom, there are other ingredients and contexts that must be taken into account before formulating an effective dual language policy.

The aims of the school must be examined carefully, in terms of language preservation and second language competence.  School teachers are language planners, even if subconsciously.  If the children's minority language is to  be preserved, then separation may be a central policy element.  When teachers are more enthusiastic about majority (second language) competence, then different practices and outcomes, in terms of language allocation, will be desired.  Fewer language boundaries may be maintained, since loosening them helps ensure development of the majority language.  

The nature of the students must be considered in any policy regarding language boundaries and concurrent use, with policies and practices adjusted to age and grade level.  If language development is still at an early evolutionary stage, boundary setting is more important.  With older children, whose languages are relative well developed, the concurrent use of two languages may be more viable and desirable.  Older children may have more stability and separation in their language abilities.

Furthermore, this suggests that a static policy with regard to boundaries, and concurrent use within the school is less justifiable than a progressive policy that examines different applications across years and grade levels.  Early separation may be very important.  Later, in high school, a more concurrent use may encourage conceptual clarity, depth of understanding and cognitive development.

For a progressive policy it is necessary to consider different types of classroom communication.  When the teacher speaks more informally and simply to the class, the weaker language may be appropriate.  In practical activities, also, where there is context embedded help, the weaker language may serve well.  Where the cognitive level is higher in transmitting the curriculum, as with more complex, abstract ideas, either the stronger language or a bilingual approach may be needed.  Different types of classroom episodes, such as managerial, instructional and practical activity, constrain or allow comprehensible second language communication and concurrent usage.

Different dimensions of the school need individual discussions related to separation and integration of languages, for example in curriculum, whole school policies, classrooms and lessons.  At what level of organization should separation occur?  Our earlier discussion of language separation by curriculum material and medium of delivery showed that language separation is not a distinct issue from rational concurrent use, but merges into a consideration of integrated use.

Another important factor in deciding language separation issues is class language balance.  If all the children are native speakers of one language, it may be easy to determine a language allocation.  With mixed classes there are differing balances of majority and minority languages.  Who dominates numerically, linguistically and psychologically?  When the balance is tilted against language minority children, a clear separation, with the curriculum balance toward the minority language may be desirable.  Whether the student body is language minority in a subtractive or additive situation should also affect language allocation policies.

Where language minority children are the numerical majority, a slow change, rather that a sharp shift from language separation to concurrent use is advisable.  The minority language often risks perception as less powerful or useful, and lower in status, as children grow older.  Therefore, the minority language must be protected and keep a constant high profile in the school.

School language policy must take into account 'out of school exposure' to the first and second languages.  Sometimes, equal time is advocated to each language within the school, half the curriculum in one, half in the other.  However, if the child is surrounded by the majority language outside the school, on the street, in shops and through the media, then perhaps the separation balance ought to be adjusted toward the minority language in school.  'Out of school' exposure may also make some teachers hesitant about concurrent usage.

Replication and duplication of content threaten bilingual classroom methodology, since some pupils will not concentrate when the same subject matter is repeated in a different language.  However, repetition is sometimes pragmatically necessary.  Where there is a considerable variety of different home and preferred language, a teacher and bilingual assistant may need to repeat instruction in different languages.  There are some multilingual classrooms, in New York, Toronto and London, with a diversity of home languages among the children.  Replication of teaching in two or three languages may be essential for children in the early grades, so that as many as possible can comprehend.  This complicates debates about concurrent use and language boundaries.  One solution is small group learning, as seen in progressive British and North American primary schools.  This may allow establishment of some language boundaries, with different children addressed by bilingual teachers and aides, in their preferred language.

The use of non-repetitive and non-parallel bilingual materials, built in an incremental and well sequenced and structured manner, is valuable, particularly in high schools.  However, the production and availability of materials in many minority languages is difficult to achieve, and funding for such materials may be difficult to secure.

In a concurrent and purposeful use of two classroom languages, as advocated by Jacobson (1990), there is the danger of requiring teachers to manage an unnatural, artificial and highly complex language situation.  Where teachers are expected to manage concurrent use of two languages in a classroom, they are assumed to have a very high level of management skill, monitoring and reflection.  In reality, classrooms are busy, very fluid, often unpredictable places.  Teachers must react to the moment, to individuals who don't understand, with many unpredictable and spontaneous situations.  Students themselves have an important influence on classroom language uses, needing to share understanding (or lack of it) in the most appropriate way.  Classroom management of learning and behavior must be fluent, accepted by students, not abrupt and unpredictable.  Classroom language allocation must fit naturally, predictably, fluently and flexibly into curriculum management.

TEDTalks: Ken Robinson (2006) - Creativity in Education

It's funny - I've seen this before, but I decided to watch it again and take some notes.

Robinson begins by claiming one of ideas we need to grapple with is that we don't know what future holds or what it's going to look like, so how do we educate today's children?

"Creativity is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status."
"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original."

He comments that by the time we're adults we stigmatize mistakes, "We're educating people out of their creative capacities."

"We don't grow into creativity - we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it."

Robinson is hilarious, and makes some great jokes imagining Shakespeare as a 7 year old in an English class.

"Every education system on Earth has the same hierarchy of subjects... At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts. Everywhere on Earth. And in pretty much every system, too, there's a hierarchy within the arts: art and music are usually given a higher status in schools than drama and dance. There isn't an education system on the planet that teaches dance ever day to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why? Why not? I think this is rather important."

"As children grow older we start to progressively educate them from the waist up. And then we focus on their heads - and slightly to one side."

Robinson claims that the people who come out at the top of this kind of system are the people who wind up as university professors, but typically those are the kinds of people who are disembodied and live in their heads. "They look at their body as a form of transport for their heads." (ha!)

"The education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability, and there's a reason... There were no public systems of education before the 19th century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. So the hierarchy is based on two ideas: (1) The most useful subjects for work are at the top, so you were probably steered benignly away from things when you were a kid - things you liked - on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that...
Benign advice - now profoundly mistaken. The whole world's engulfed in a revolution.
And the second is: (2) Academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence, because the universities designed the system in their image. If you think of it, the whole systsem of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not.
Because the thing they were good at at school wasn't valued or was actually stigmatized."

"In the next 30 years, according to UNESCO, more people will be graduating through public education than since the beginning of history....
Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything." (ie. now you may need an MA to get a job - "the process of academic inflation."
"We know three things about intelligence:
(1) It's diverse. We think about the world in all of the ways that we experience it - we think visually, we think in sound, we think kinesthetically; we think in abstract terms; we think in movement.
(2) Intelligence is dynamic. If you look at all of the interactions of the brain...intelligence is wonderfully interactive."
Creativity = the process of having original ideas that have value
Creativity, more often than not, comes from different disciplines and ways of seeing things.
(3) Intelligence is distinct.

"I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology. One in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we stripmine the Earth for a particular commodity, and for the future it won't service. We have to rethink the fundamental principles upon which we're educating our children."

"Our task is to educate their whole being."